Future Students

If you are interested in a Masters or PhD, and want me as a supervisor, please contact me at donald.derrick at canterbury.ac.nz

Admittance into either program requires the pre-requisite degree and grades, as well as a very basic proposal and direct communication with your intended supervisor. We talk, and decide if coming here is mutually beneficial. I am particularly interested in students who want to study multisensory speech perception and production, or students who want to do instrumental/laboratory phonetics/phonology. I’m an expert in Ultrasound Imaging of the Tongue, Electro-magnetic Articulometry, and air flow analysis. I’d also be interested in researchers who’d like to gamify research, in particular in speech production, perception, or therapy.

I especially want visionaries who want to do truly original research. My current PhD student Peiman Pishyardehkordi and I are trying to develop and flesh out an entire theory of true multi-sensory speech production and perception that includes visual speech and speech air flow.  Also, even a casual glance at my software list will show you I have substantial software development skills across many programming languages. I especially welcome scholars who have development experience, but absolutely require at minimum the will and aptitude to learn how to code statistical analyses and experimental setups. In return, I will work very hard for and with you – not just during your graduate studies, but in your transition to the career of your choice and beyond.

Now to the details: The University of Canterbury MA and PhD are by thesis only – students wanting a course component should consider the MLING program.

The best source of funding for a University of Canterbury PhD is the PhD scholarship. Please note that no matter where you come from, if your body is in New Zealand, you pay only the local fees.  International fees only happen to people who aren’t from New Zealand, and aren’t currently living here.

From time to time I might have other sources of funding.  If that source is part of a formal call, you’ll see it advertised on Linguist List.  Informally – not to be counted upon for economic survival, but common to research labs everywhere – there tends to be research assistantships available to those who are good at research and/or programming.